sandbags and silent nights

Coming of a quiet night (silent night holy night) and feeling a little better rested. Though its my fault why I’m a little tired. I cleaned my trailer with Clorox wet wipes then started reading on The Fools Progress but remembered I had to visit someone’s hooch to pick something up. On the way I ran into a friend and she came back to my hooch with me and we sat out talking until midnight. Then my roommate comes home right as I’m ready to crawl into bead (dark, blissfully silent) and turns on the light. I cover up my head with my Korean blanket but eventually have to tell him to turn off his lamp. Sleep…but not enough hours.
I had sand bag detail yesterday. The idea is to sit outside supervising local nationals while they build or refurbish existing sand bag wall s in the trailer park. That worked for the morning. SrA A. and I found shady spots to sit where we actually could watch the action and track where the Iraqi teenage boys and old men who made up the detail wandered off to. Iraqis are generally hard workers. They work with a group mentality which we were briefed on before deploying. They’ve filled about 3 million sand bags in the last few months. Occasionally some of the younger kids who carried trash and tend to know more English would come over and talk with us. One kid showed me how he broke his arm in three places playing football and can’t bend it all the way back now. He kept offering me More menthol cigarettes which I puffed on with him although I don’t smoke. Its very offensive to an Iraqi to refuse an offer. Others just asked us for shoes because theirs were falling apart. If you want to do something good send some old (but not worn out) shoes to Iraq. I’ll probably leave all mine here but for my boots.
Then my friend Jackie, a pretty blonde with tortoise shell cat eye glasses wandered out of her hooch and stood talking to us while she waited on her laundry. I decided to make a picture…mistake.
The guys dropped their sand bags and surrounded us asking to have their pictures taken, mostly with Jackie, some with me because I wear gold warfare pins and they thought I was important. I’ve never ordered the subdued patches and pins we are supposed to wear and with 60 days to go I probably won’t now.
At 1145 we broke for lunch and when we came back the 130 degree heat made us drop all attempts at looking like we were supervising. Me, SrA A, a SSGT, and a Major sat in the shade of a eucalyptus tree and waited out the day.
Due to the heat the LN’s knocked off at two fifteen. All eighty of them gathered under the eucalyptus tree where they handed their badges in to a former captain in the Iraqi army. They sat their patiently, some singing, some laughing, until they were paid their $7 or $8 dollars worth of Iraqi dinar. Supervisors got $10.
I had to go back to work for the rest of the day but I think I’ll volunteer for sand bag detail again, I’d like to do it about once a week. Staring into the sun is a nice break from staring at my HP 1702 computer monitor.